CONCERNING

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Blessed by Rabbi Who Made Racist Remarks: Report

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef once compared black people to monkeys.

White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reportedly received a blessing from a rabbi who previously compared black people to monkeys, according to The Forward. Kushner and Trump were both in Jerusalem for the opening of the new U.S. Embassy and received a blessing from Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef during the celebrations. Yosef, one of the two chief rabbis in Israel, used the word “kushi”—a biblical term now considered derogatory for black people. “You can’t make the blessing on every ‘kushi’ you see—in America you see one every five minutes, so you make it only on a person with a white father and mother,” Yosef said during a sermon in March. “How do would you know? Let’s say you know! So they had a monkey as a son, a son like this, so you say the blessing on him.” The Anti-Defamation League called the remarks “utterly unacceptable,” and Yosef responded by saying he was “merely citing the Talmud.” Yosef has a history of questionable remarks, suggesting women who dressed immodestly were “animals” and claiming non-Jews were forbidden to live in Israel.